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Both Jyn and Cassian were somewhat surprised after Endor, after Jakku, that they were still in the land of the living. Neither of them had wanted to die, but with as many close calls as they’d both had, before and after Scariff, the possibility that they might end up dying for the Rebellion had been in the back of both their minds. As a result, they made the most of the stolen minutes and hours they found together during the war itself.
Now, both standing in the mess of a star cruiser while other troops around them cheered out in victory over the Empire and the end of the war, both stood looking at each other with eyes wide in relief and hope. Those few moments they’d let themselves discuss the end of the war and what came after, they’d never let themselves believe too hard that they would get that future.
How they spent that future ended up coming in the form of a suggestion from Kes Dameron that they settle on Yavin near Kes, his wife Shara Bey, and their son Poe. So Jyn and Cassian found their own home in the jungles of Yavin, close enough to the small outpost that had sprung up as a result of various members of the former rebellion settling on there.
Even with peace officially declared and the Empire destroyed, there was a lot of cleanup. Cleanup and duties that Cassian and Jyn both found themselves wrapped up in. They had more time together now, in their home on Yavin, but they both got called away on missions at times, for days or weeks. But they made one promise to each other.
That promise was whoever was home would leave a light on for the one who was away.
******
6 ABY
“How many weeks this time?” Jyn asked softly as she leaned back against the kitchen counter, watching Cassian drop the last of his gear in his pack. He’d be leaving in a few minutes to go to the spaceport for his pickup.
“Hopefully no more than two or three,” Cassian sighed. “It’s in Hutt space, with tends to complicate things.” He took the three steps between them and wrapped an arm around her waist. “I love you, Jyn Erso.”
“I love you too, Cassian Andor,” she said, leaning her head up. He responded with a kiss, hugging her tightly a last time before they parted reluctantly, and she watched him head out the door.
“I’ll leave a light on for you,” she promised.
After Cassian vanished from sight of the doorway, she turned and cross to the lap sitting on a low table in the living room and pressed her fingers against the barely-there knob at the bottom of the lamp. The light clicked on instantly, and while light filtered in from the living room windows, Jyn saw no harm in leaving the lamp on.
Every night before she went to bed, she would pause in the living room by the lamp, looking at the light for a long moment before she wandered back towards the bedroom.
Two and a half weeks later, she was standing in the kitchen with Shara, chopping a root vegetable as she and Shara discussed Poe’s most recent antics when the front door slid open. Poe sat on the floor playing with his toy X-Wing, staying just out of the adults’ way.
“Uncle Cass!” Poe’s excited cry brought Jyn’s head jerking up, having expected it to be Kes coming in to join them. She was half a step behind Poe as Cassian scooped his nephew up in one arm and hugged the boy, and caught Jyn with his other arm, pulling his wife against his side.
His eyes drifted to the lamp in the living room, a smiling quirking his lips when he noted it was on despite the light from the windows. He met Jyn’s gaze and she smiled.
Shara claimed her son from his uncle, allowing Cassian to pull Jyn into a full body hug. “I see you left the light on,” he said in her ear.
She chuckled. “Well, I said I would.”
*******
9 ABY
Mid-afternoon and a frustrated looking Kes Dameron sat on the couch in the Erso-Andor living room, his son tucked into his lap as he watched Shara and Jyn checking through the last of their equipment. Poe watched his mother and aunt, dressed in their familiar orange flight suits and white flak vests, his X-Wing toy clutched tightly to his chest. While at seven some might consider him a little to big to sit in his father’s lap anymore, neither of his parents held to that opinion, and particularly right now Kes offered his son all the comfort he could.
“You’re sure you two have to go?” Kes asked again.
“Mama?” Poe followed up the question with his own.
Cassian on the couch with Kes, just watching the two pilots with resigned eyes.
Shara and Jyn exchanged a look before Shara knelt in front of Poe and took his hand in hers. “I know it’s scary baby,” she said, and her eyes flickered to Kes, reaching out her other hand to place it on his knee. “If it was anyone other than Organa asking us…”
“I know,” Kes said a little sadly. “I just hate that you’re being pulled away again.”
“You’d better come home,” Cassian told Jyn as she joined Shara kneeling in front of the couch.
“Just leave the light on for me,” Jyn told him, squeezing his hand.
Kes pulled Shara into his arms and Poe clung to his mother for a few minutes as Cassian held Jyn and kissed her soundly.
“We’ll be back,” Shara told them before she and Jyn left. Three gazes trailed after them until they vanished from view of the front window.
Kes held a trembling Poe as he watched Cassian move to the lamp on the low living room table and flicked it on.
“They’ll come back,” Cassian told his friend with complete certainty.
Days passed, with Cassian spending several evenings at the Bey-Dameron residence or Kes and Poe at the Erso-Andor residence, waiting for news. They both received occasional messages, news of occasional dog fights with left over Imperial forces, chasing them towards Unknown Space.
A message came through two weeks later, a holo call that Kes took standing in Cassian and Jyn’s living room. Two smiling pilots stared back at their families. “We’re coming home,” Shara told them.
“Love you mama!” Poe cried; his arm wrapped around his father’s leg as he stared up at the holoprojector in his father’s palm.
“Love you too little pilot,” Shara replied, even over the call her eyes going soft as she watched her son.
“I’ll turn the lamp off when I get in,” Jyn promised Cassian with a smile.
A few days later, Cassian had fallen asleep on the couch, a restless doze late into the night when he heard the door slide open. He lifted his head from the scratchy sofa pillow and found Jyn leaning over him. “Let’s go to bed, love,” she told him as she reached over to shut off the lamp. He let her tug him towards the bedroom, a sleepy smile on his lips.
*********
12 ABY
“One more mission, eh?” Jyn asked, melancholy smile on her lips as she watched Cassian pack.
“Last one,” Cassian promised her. “I’m officially retired after this.”
“Well I could always use help repairing ships,” Jyn told her husband. She reached out and ran a hand along his cheek. “Be careful, Cass, I have a bad feeling about this one.”
“Leave the light on for me,” he repeated that familiar phrase.
“Always,” she promised.
She flipped the lamp on as she always did when Cassian left for a mission, marking his features in her mind as he slipped out their front door.
For the first week she spent two nights on the sofa, sleeping beside the lamp, still feeling uneasy. Into the second week when he made a check in, everything seemed to be going well. The third week she received a message that he would be delayed, one more lead he had to follow before he could report back to Senator Organa and come home.
She was over at Damerons’ when the call came in. Shara Bey had been killed the year before, and both Kes and Poe were still mourning Shara’s death. Jyn missed her friend dearly, and being near Poe was the closest she knew she would get to ever seeing her friend again, so when Kes had asked Jyn to watch Poe for a few hours while he dealt with some business, she’d easily agreed.
Her holoprojector flickered once, twice, as a call came in. “Aunt Jyn,” nine-year-old Poe caught her attention. Jyn flicked the device to accept the call, her brow creasing when she saw Leia Organa-Solo’s worried expression.
“Jyn?” Leia asked.
“Leia, what’s wrong?” Jyn asked, put on guard by the Senator’s tone.
Leia looked weary and sorrowful as she gazed back at Jyn. “I’m sorry Jyn, but Cassian’s missed his last two check ins, and they can’t find any sign of him.”
Jyn staggered. Poe dashed out of the room, going to grab his father as Jyn caught herself on a chair. “He’s missing?” she asked in a hollow voice, confirming Leia’s first words.
“Yes,” Leia said, guilt in her expression. “I’m so sorry Jyn.”
Everything else went statically. Jyn came back to herself laying on the floor, Kes and Poe’s concerned faces hovering over her. Kes’s expression held his own sorry, and he wrapped an arm around Jyn as the tears began leaking from her eyes, letting her press her face into his shoulder as Poe hugged her leg tightly.
The next days passed in a blur. Kes spent the next few days making sure that Jyn ate and drank, and put a call in to Chirrut Îmwe, Baze Malbus, and Bodhi Rook, knowing that Jyn would need the support of her family and former crew. Chirrut and Baze arrived first and took over watching Jyn and making sure she took care of herself, with Bodhi joining them a week later.
Jyn missed Cassian, with a permanent ache settling in her chest. As the first month passed and then another, Baze and Chirrut firmly took up residence in the second bedroom of the house, watching Poe during the day as Kes and Jyn repaired ships at the spaceport. Bodhi stayed a few weeks before he had to leave to meet some commitments, but Jyn found her friend visiting at least once a month over the next several months.
Each night, she sat in her living room, staring at the lamp on the low table that she refused to turn off. Kes came over with Poe sometimes for dinner, and she asked Kes one night if the pain ever went away.
“I wish I could tell you it did,” Kes replied as he shifted a sleeping Poe in his lap. “But all I can say is I think it just aches a bit less.” His eyes flickered towards the lamp, but he made no suggestion that she turn it off.
Weeks and months passed, and Jyn slowly began to fall into a new normal. She thought Kes was right, that the ache never really went away, but at least she could look around her home without wanting to cry quite as often, even if she still cried herself to sleep most nights. She hadn’t slept in her actual bed but once or twice since the news had come, instead sleeping on the couch by the lamp she refused to turn off.
Baze and Chirrut stopped arguing with her about sleeping in the room she used the share with Cassian after the first month. If sleeping by the lamp brought her comfort (and she refused to move it elsewhere in the house), they weren’t going to stop her.
*******
13 ABY
Jyn say alone on the couch in her living room. Baze and Chirrut were off spending a bit of time alone and Kes and Poe were at home, leaving her to veg on some old holo vids for the afternoon. It had been months since she’d bothered trying to watch one, before Cassian had left on his final mission. It had been a little over ten months since Leia had called her to report he was missing. Since then there’d been no sign of him, no body recovered, and he’d been declared KIA two months ago.
So, this afternoon she sat on their couch, wrapped in Cassian’s favorite blanket, and watching one of his favorite cheesy holo vids about two lovers who kept running into each other unexpectedly at space ports. It was overly sappy and a little unbelievable, but Cassian had always enjoyed it, and Jyn found it brought her a little comfort, remembering how Cassian used to laugh at the contrived meetings in the vid.
Out of the corner of her eyes she saw the lamp flickering and frowned, pausing the vid to check on it. She messed around with it for a moment, making sure everything was connected and adjusted the connection between the base and stand and it stopped flickering. She set the lamp back on the table, wondering just for a moment if she should shut it off.
She couldn’t bring herself to though, shutting it off would mean giving up on Cassian ever coming home.
She tugged the blanket back around her shoulders and unpaused the vid, humming along as the characters on the screen broke into a musical number. She let herself relax into the couch and blanket, letting her mind drift as she watched the vid.
She cocked her head as the end credits began to play as she heard the front door sliding open. She wasn’t expecting Chirrut and Baze back for a few hours. Jyn turned as a shadow felt over the couch…
And launched herself into Cassian’s arms.
Cassian caught her and pulled her tightly to him, murmuring “I love you” over and over into her ear as she buried her head in his neck and cried.
When she could catch her breath again after sobbing for several minutes, she stared up at him. “You’re really here, this isn’t some fever dream?”
Cassian gave her a smile, a weary one, but one full of love and affection. “No, Kyber-heart. I’m real.” He glanced at the lamp beside the couch. “You kept the light on for me, and I came back to you.”
“Kiss me, please. I love you,” she said, staring into those beloved brown eyes of his. Cassian smiled and answered by pressing his lips against his own.
“I’ll never leave again, my love,” he promised her.
Jyn pulled him over to the couch, wrapping the blanket around both their shoulders as the holo screen went blank. She flicked her finger over the knob on the lamp and turned it off. Cassian pulled her into his lap, the blanket wrapped firmly around them, and they sank into another kiss.